Descripción
Constructive, constructivism painting TTG. Torres Garcia Workshop. att. Manuel Pailos
Old painting / cardboard ”Constructive Couple” marked behind T.T.G, acronym corresponding to the Torres Garcia Workshop, whose authorship is attributed to the artist Manuel Pailos.
Framed measurements: 70cm (27.5”) x 61cm (24”)
Unframed measurements: 48cm (19”) x 39cm (15.5”)
The Torres García Workshop was created as The School of the South by teacher Joaquín Torres García in 1942 in Montevideo. It functioned as a workshop and collective teaching of art and painting based on constructive Universalism. Due to the great prominence of its students and followers, the workshop became a Uruguayan artistic movement with its own outstanding identity.
History
In 1935 Joaquín Torres García created the Constructive Art Association, which functioned as an art study center under his charge until 1940. On January 26, 1943, the first meeting of the Taller Torres García (T.T.G.) was held at the premises on the street Abayubá 2763, Montevideo. In July of the same year, Torres García announced to his students as an exclusive workshop practice a painting based on line, geometry and color planes in a golden structure, where each student could carry out their personal investigations but without deviating from the premise. .
In September 1943 they held the Elementarist Constructive Plastic exhibition at the Ateneo de Montevideo, during the opening the students of the workshop distributed flyers with the constructivist manifesto. Among the students of the workshop were: Julio U. Alpuy, Elsa Andrada, Daymán Antúnez, Sergio de Castro, Gonzalo Fonseca, Jonio Montiel, Héctor Ragni, Berta Luisi and the master’s children Augusto and Horacio, among several others.
In 1945 Julio Alpuy began teaching at the T.T.G. according to the Torresgarcian standards taught by his teacher and the Permanent Exhibition Hall is inaugurated in the basement of the Salamanca Bookstore (first name of today’s Linardi y Risso Bookstore).
In 1946 the teaching premises were moved to the basement of the Ateneo de Montevideo, 52 artists participated in the inaugural exhibition with more than 500 works. Alpuy was in charge of the classes after the death of Joaquín Torres García in 1949. In 1951 José Gurvich began to teach classes,2 and so did Horacio and Augusto Torres, Manuel Pailós and Gonzalo Fonseca. From the beginning they carried out numerous exhibitions, publications and activities to disseminate constructivism. In 1967 the activity of the workshop ended in the basement of the Ateneo, which became the headquarters of the Torres García Museum previously located on Avenida 18 de Julio 1903. In 1975 the Ateneo ended the contract with the museum and ended the activity until the reopening of the new headquarters of the museum in the Old City of Montevideo.
The members of the T.T.G. They continued to give painting classes according to constructivist precepts in their own workshops until the end of the 20th century.